
I, OlL'iNAL YEAR 




MANY A HOME WO'Jl 
RE-CREATED MEl 
THE INTRODUCTION 
AND THEN AT A CRu: 

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Class 
Book 



Gopyright^l^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



WITH ONtY di€ SWEEP OF 
YOUR BR 
.tHL\NGE THl COMPLEXION 

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AN ORIGINAL YEAR 





"THERE IS NO NEW THING UNDER 
THE SUN." — EccL. 1:9. 

"O SING UNTO THE LORD A NEW 
SONG." — Ps. 98:1. 





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Copyright, 1910 
By Luthee H. Cart 




THE • PLIMPTON • PRESS 

W .D .O] 
^ORWOOD • MASS . U • S • A. 




©GLA271745 




AN ORIGINAL YEAR 






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THE man who wrote Ecclesiastes 
begins his book in a terrible 
humor. He starts with an outburst 
like this: "Vanity of vanities, all is 
vanity." What is the matter with the 
m.8in? He is sick of the irritating 
repetitiousness and unending monotony 
of life. He is disgusted with the ever- 
lasting sameness of the world. Life, he 
says, is the same old thing over and 
over again. A generation comes and 
goes, still another generation comes and 
goes, and one supposes that there is 
going to be something new. But he 
finds himself mistaken. The earth 
abides. The world does not change, 
the framework is fixed, the stage is 
never altered, the scenery continues 
the same, the lights remain constant. 
The sun rises and sets, rises and sets, 
rises and sets. It is incapable of origi- 
nality. The wind is called variable, but 
all its changes are within narrow limits. 
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It veers from the north to the south, 
but soon comes back to the north 
again. It is always blowing out of 
one of the same old quarters. It 
travels everlastingly round the same 
old circle. 

The rivers flow into the sea. All of 
them do this, they keep doing it all the 
time — but what does it amount to ? 
The sea is never full. The sea sends 
back the water to the hills, and the 
water flows to the sea again. The 
ancients supposed that the sea found 
its way back through subterranean 
channels, bubbling up in springs and 
descending in rivers to the sea again. 
We know that the sea goes into the 
clouds, falls upon hill and plain, and 
then runs to the ocean-bed again. But 
it is the same old circuit, whether you 
view it as an ancient or a modern. 

Man stands upon the earth and 
watches all this, but his eye is never 
satisfied. He listens to the music, but 
his heart finds no rest. The thing 
which hath been is the thing which 
shall be, and the thing which hath been 
done is the thing which shall be done 
again. "There is no new thing under 
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the sun." If some man says, **Look! 
This is new," he is mistaken. This 
thing is ancient, it happened ages ago. 
What men did before our day was soon 
forgotten. What we do will likewise 
fade. The same fate awaits all the 
generations. "Vanity of vanities, all is 
vanity! " 

Thus does this somber-hearted writer 
of long ago scold and moan, as he thinks 
of the intolerable routine of the years 
and the unending monotony of human 
life. 

Many a person comes up to a new 
year with some such feeling as that 
which filled the soul of the author of 
Ecclesiastes. Who has not heard on 
New Year's Day a voice in the heart 
saying: "What is the use of all this.^^ 
It is the same old thing over and over 
again. Why call the year *new,' for it 
will soon rub off its newness and become 
precisely like all of its predecessors .^^ 
' There is no new thing under the sun.' " 

Does not the voice speak truly ? Are., 

we not going to remain this year the 

persons which we were last year? We 

cannot increase the number of our 

We might, to be sure, lose one 

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of them, but we will not think of that 
possibility today. We shall possess 
simply the old faculties : memory, imag- 
ination, reason, judgment, conscience, 
and taste. We cannot add to the num- 
ber. Of course we might lose one of 
them, but that is not an achievement 
which we shall think about just now. 
Our disposition will remain virtually 
what it has been. We shall have our 
jubilant days and our days of depres- 
sion, our ugly moods and our moods of 
serenity and peace. Our temper will 
tug at the leash, and now and then will 
break loose as it always has, and as in 
all probability it always will. Can a 
man by making New Year's resolutions 
add a cubit to his physical or moral 
stature ? 

Not only shall we ourselves remain 
substantially what we have been, but 
we are going to do in the main the same 
old things which we have been doing 
for a long time. The boys and girls 
will go back to school. The mechanics 
will go again to their trades. The law- 
yers will go back to their clients, and 
look through the same old law books 
and search for the same old precedents, 
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AN ORIGINAL YEAR 



winning some cases and losing others. 
The doctors will go back to the sick- 
room, dealing with the same old dis- 
eases, some of their patients living and 
some of their patients dying. The 
merchants will go back to their mer- 
chandise, losing on some of their ven- 
tures and gaining on others, counting 
up their profits and losses at the end of 
the year. The stenographer will go 
back to her stenography, the bookkeeper 
to his bookkeeping, the banker to his 
money, the school teacher to her school, 
the housekeeper to her housekeeping, 
with its unending routine of worry and 
work. There is no new thing under the 
sun. 

And shall we not have the same old 
experiences? We shall meet lovely 
people and people who are not so 
lovely. We shall laugh and cry, become 
fatigued and rested. We shall be bored. 
We shall have our perplexities and our 
anxieties, our interruptions and dis- 
appointments. We shall indulge in as- 
pirations and undergo disillusionments. 
We shall make many resolutions and 
also break many. We shall build plans, 
and not all of them will be carried out. 
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What new thing is there under the sun? 
One of the voices in the human heart 
is always ready to cry, "Vanity of '^ J 
vanities, all is vanity." &\ 

But that is only one mood through ^ d! 
which the soul sees the world. That is ,1 

only one attitude toward human life. a/ 
That is only one light under which to 
study the universe and the years. There 
are two voices in the Bible because there ^ 
are two voices in the human soul. If 
there is a voice in the Bible which sobs, 
"There is no new thing under the sun," 
there is also a voice which exultingly 
cries, "O sing unto the Lord a new 
song." The routine of existence is 
always tempting man to say, "There 
is no new thing under the sun," but 
there is something in him which keeps 
shouting, "O sing unto the Lord a new 
song." ^ ^^ 

And what shall he sing about.? 
"About something old," says the Bible. 
Whenever a Hebrew poet exhorts his 
countrymen to sing a new song, he asks 
them to sing about something that is 
ancient. It is an old theme, an old 
truth, an old mercy, a long-past de- 
liverance, an ancient kindness of God. 
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Men are urged to come to the old sub- 
jects with a freshened interest and a 
deeper insight and a greater capacity 
for appreciation. And so out of the 
old universe with its old processes and 
phenomena, its old forces and develop- 
ments, its old tragedies and coronations, 
there is to come a song that is new. It 
is possible to bring out of the heart a 
groan or a carol, a sigh or a song, a 
whimper or an anthem. Man can say, 
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. 
There is no new thing under the sun," 
or he can sing a new song. And this is 
the wonderful thing about the Bible, 
that the voices of triumph and victory 
in it little by little gain the mastery 
over the voices of weariness and despair. 
The voices that cry, "Vanity of vani- 
ties, all is vanity," become fainter and 
fainter, and the voices that shout, "O 
sing unto the Lord a new song," become 
louder and clearer, until by and by, 
when we reach the end of the last book 
in the New Testament, all the voices of 
disgust are completely swallowed up in 
the swelling strains of the song that is 
new. 

Unhappy indeed is the man who does 
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not on every New Year's Day hear a 
voice within him calling, *'0 sing unto 
the Lord a new song." No matter 
what the past year may have been, no 
matter how heavy its burdens, or vexa- 
tious its disappointments, or humiliating 
its defeats, or piercing its sorrows, every 
heart — unless dead — dares on the 
first day of January to expect that the 
coming year will be a better and a 
brighter one than the year which has 
preceded it. When we say to our 
friends, "I wish you a happy New 
Year," we are only wishing for them 
what we covet for ourselves. We hope 
that the coming year will be really 
new. No year in all our life has been 
quite satisfactory. Every one of them 
has fallen short of our glowing expecta- 
tions. There is none of them without 
a blot, no, not one. If our sun is in 
the West, it may be that the years 
have grown monotonous, and life is 
tending to become flat and stale. We 
have seen all there is to be seen, we 
have enjoyed all there is to be enjoyed, 
and we are ready to exclaim with the 
Hebrew writer, "There is no new thing 
under the sun." We have tried so often 
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to make life new, and have so often 
failed, that we cannot say with the 
exuberant confidence of old, "O sing 
unto the Lord a new song ! " 

It is a problem, then, for young and 
old alike, how to make a new year new. 
We are not satisfied with that which 
has been. Our heart cries out for an 
original year. Where is the Magician 
who can teach us how in a world that 
is old, amid experiences which are old, 
to sing a song that is new ? 

His name is Jesus of Nazareth. He 
says from his throne, "Behold, I 
make all things new." He is Lord of 
life and of the years, and when we take 
his yoke upon us and learn of him, we 
find ourselves singing a new song. It 
is his way to alter the year by altering 
the soul. He performs all his miracles 
by a transformation of the heart. His 
great word to us and to all men is, "Fol- 
low Me." It is by following him that 
we become partakers of his originality 
and come into possession of power by 
which a year is transfigured. 

In the days of his flesh, the Son of 
God was always singing a new song. 
His originality has been sometimes ques- 

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tioned only because certain of the wise 
and prudent do not know what origin- 
ahty is. He made all things in his day 
and generation new, not by changing 
the framework of the world, nor by 
making use of ideas and words never 
heard before, but by bringing to every 
situation the freshness of a soul com- 
pletely filled with God. Let us note a 
few of the ways in which he made old 
things new. 

He had a genius for putting together 
things which had drifted apart. He 
converted two old things into a new 
thing by linking them together. He 
showed wonderful originality by the 
way in which he brought together 
truths which had become separated. 
For instance, when he was asked to 
pick out the great commandment, he 
said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and soul, and 
mind, and strength, and thy neighbor 
as thyself." The first part of this 
commandment he found in the sixth 
chapter of Deuteronomy, and the second 
part he found in the nineteenth chapter 
of Leviticus. The love of God and the 
love of man had both been demanded 

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of the Israelitish people, but the two 
duties had been allowed to drift apart. 
The leaders of Israel had not seen their 
vital connection and had made ineffec- 
tual efforts to link them together. The 
worship of God had been kept in one 
place and the service of man had been 
kept in another place, and the result 
was moral disaster and spiritual ship- 
wreck. Jesus picked up the fragments 
of the one great commandment and 
put them together. By doing this he 
lifted to a new level the religious his^ 
tory of the world. 

In the same manner we can make a 
year original by putting together things 
which we have allowed to fall asunder. 
For instance, business and religion, how 
easily they drift apart. Religion be- 
longs to Sunday, business belongs to 
Monday. It is comfortable to have 
them thus. To keep Sunday and Mon- 
day together is a difficult and embar- 
rassing task. How different life would 
be to many of us if we made a serious 
effort to keep Sunday and Monday 
together. The world would become 
new to us if we should really try to 
make religion our business and busi- 

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ness our religion. They are certainly 
like unto one another. The one is the 
love of God and the other is the love 
of man, and the tragedy of the Chris- 
tian world is that so many Christians 
do not consider religion a matter of 
business, nor do they look upon busi- 
ness as a part of religion. 

Jesus made all things new by shifting 
the emphasis. This is a thing which 
all of us can do. God has placed it 
within our power to determine upon 
what point the emphasis shall be placed. 
In the first century, the Jews were 
placing tremendous emphasis on ritual. 
Jesus lifted it from ritual and let it fall 
on character. The Jews laid the chief 
stress on the outside. Jesus laid the 
primary stress on the inside. The 
Jewish church magnified sacrifice until 
it dwarfed everything else. Jesus lifted 
up mercy until everybody could see it. 
Simply by a shifting of the emphasis he 
brought a fresh vision to Palestine. 

Where are you putting the empha- 
sis ? If you only shift it to the point 
selected by Jesus, you will alter the 
tone and trend of your life. Every- 
thing depends upon the point of em- 

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phasis. The meaning of a sentence 
hangs upon the word which you make 
emphatic. If you say, "/ would not 
do that" — you mean one thing. If 
you say, "I would not do that^^ — you 
mean another thing. In the first case, 
you are comparing yourself with some- 
body else; in the second case, you are 
comparing a certain act with another 
act. How have you been pronouncing 
the words "I and others".? Some of 
you have been saying, no doubt, "/ 
and others." If you would only transfer 
the emphasis and say, "I and others*^ 
you would sing a new song. 

How easy it is to put emphasis on 
externalities! Nowhere is it so easy to 
do this as in large cities. The constant 
tendency is to pay attention to the 
surface, to glorify the exterior. We are 
tempted to concentrate attention upon 
dress and house, upon knives and forks, 
and spoons and napkins. Many of us 
could change the whole tenor of our 
life by simply carrying the emphasis to 
the interior, laying it upon disposition 
and attitude, upon feeling and thought. 
The Italians have always lived out of 
doors, and so Italian art for a long 

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time lived and moved and had its 
being in that atmosphere. But when 
art became acchmated in Holland, art 
became a different thing. The Dutch 
artists began to paint interiors. The 
Dutch kitchens became on canvas as 
interesting and as beautiful as the love- 
liest of Italian landscapes, and the old 
Dutch wives were fully as picturesque 
and fascinating as the Italian madon- 
nas. You could make a great change 
in your life if you would remove the 
emphasis from the exterior to the 
interior, if you passed from out of 
doors into the temple of the soul. 

Everything depends upon the virtue 
which you emphasize, the grace to 
which you give first place. Voice teach- 
ers have great difficulty sometimes with 
their pupils in getting them to bring out 
certain vowel tones. For tones have a 
strange fashion of slipping back into 
the throat. It is only when the tone 
is brought well to the front of the 
mouth that it obtains vibrancy and 
becomes capable of taking on emotional 
color. Sometimes it is necessary for a 
pupil to practise many months in order 
to bring out one particular, refractory 

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tone. As with tones so with virtues 
and graces, they have a fashion of sHp- 
ping back into the throat of the soul, 
losing brilliance and beauty. What 
Christian grace have you allowed to 
slip back out of sight ? What Christian 
virtue have you permitted to sink down 
into a subordinate place.'' It may be 
that your whole home life would be 
revolutionized if you would bring out 
into first place a Christian grace which 
you have disparaged and neglected. 
You might make the year original 
simply by placing fresh emphasis upon 
one word in life's vocabulary which you 
have been slurring. 

What aim have you been placing first ? 
Men do not differ so much from one 
another in the number and character 
of the things which they desire, as in 
the order in which they seek them. 
Character is determined, not by the 
number of things we seek, but by the 
thing we seek first. It is not the num- 
ber of things one believes in, but the 
order in which one ranks them, that 
determines the effect they have upon 
one's life. Every one, for instance, be- 
lieves in God. But the question is, 

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How do you believe in him? Where 
do you place your belief — in the fore- 
front or in the rear of your concern? 
Where do you keep your belief in immor- 
tahty — at the bottom of your mind or 
at the top ? Where do you place Christ ? 
Do you make him one of many, or do 
you crown him Lord of all? What 
place does the kingdom hold in your 
prayers and endeavors? "Seek ye first 
the kingdom," says the Lord of life, and 
if you do not throw the emphasis upon 
the adverb you fail to catch his meaning. 
All Christians seek the Kingdom, but 
not all of them seek it first. To keep 
first things first and second things 
second — this is the secret of a happy 
year. 

Or you can make the year original 
by adding a Httle something. It is 
not necessary to add much. "O the 
little more, and how much it is!" says 
Browning. Just a little is sometimes 
sufficient to bring about amazing 
changes. Jesus added a single word to 
his vocabulary which made him differ- 
ent from all the teachers that pre- 
ceded him. He always called God, 
"Father." To be sure the word had 

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been used before his day. The writer 
of the One Hundred and Third Psalm 
had used it, and so had the writer of 
Ecclesiasticus, and so had the writer 
of the Wisdom of Solomon. But those 
writers did not use it in the way in 
which Jesus used it. He spoke it with 
a different accent. He uttered it with 
a warmer tone of affection. He slipped 
it into places in which it had never 
been known before. For instance, in 
his dying hour he quoted one of the 
Psalms. One line of that psalm runs 
thus, "Into thy hands I commend my 
spirit." Jesus changed the whole psalm 
by introducing one additional word. 
He cried, ^'Father, into thy hands I 
commend my spirit." So different 
was Jesus' use of the word "Father" 
from its use by any other religious 
teacher that Paul defines God as "the 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Jesus 
gave men a new conception of God 
by the introduction of that word, 
"Father." Great changes are often 
wrought by additions apparently slight. 
You have seen an artist with one stroke 
of his brush alter completely the expres- 
sion of the portrait he was painting. 

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With only one sweep of your brush you 
can change the complexion of a year. 
You can change it by simply introdu- 
cing some beautiful thing that has not 
been there before. 

Sam Jones was one of the most at- 
tractive of evangelists. People who 
read reports of his sermons in the papers 
were usually disgusted with him. They 
could not understand how a man using 
such language could ever induce self- 
respecting people to listen to him. 
But when those critics once heard him 
preach, their opposition, in most cases, 
departed. It vanished under the magic 
of the preacher's manner. When he 
said an especially harsh thing he intro- 
duced it with a smile. He said once 
to a Boston congregation: "You cul- 
tured Bostonians do not like my lan- 
guage, but all I have to say is that I 
always come down to the level of the 
people whom I am talking to." No 
one was offended, because his tone had 
a pleasant face. He would sometimes 
pick out a man in his audience and 
say, "You old scoundrel, you know you 
are lying." But the old scoundrel never 
left the church until after the benedic- 

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tion was pronounced, because Sam 
Jones said such things with an intona- 
tion that had affection in it. The man- 
ager of a well-known restaurant in New 
York city says that whenever he criti- 
cizes his employees, he does it in French. 
He has found by experience that he can 
say things in French with less danger of 
irritating than he can say the same 
things either in English or in German. 
There are more smiles in the French 
language than in any other. It has 
a velvety touch. When one finds fault 
in French, the sharp edge of the cen- 
sure is dulled by the velvet of the lan- 
guage. Now there are different kinds 
of English. There is an English whose 
words are mixed with smiles, and there 
is another English whose words are 
soaked in frowns. Some women have 
no end of trouble with their servants. 
They seldom can live with one more 
than a few months at the longest. In 
some cases, no doubt, the blame is with 
the servants — it would be impossible 
for anybody to live with them; in 
other cases the fault is with the mis- 
tress. She does not know how to 
smile when she criticizes. She censures 
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with a face that is hke a thunder- cloud 
and in language that lacerates and stirs 
up the devil in the servant. Not a few 
women would have far less friction in 
their housekeeping if in dealing with 
their servants they would put an occa- 
sional pinch of sugar into their speech. 
Many a home would be re-created 
merely by the introduction now and 
then at a critical moment of a smile. 

A New England essayist has recently 
published an interesting paper which 
he entitles, "Carlyle's Laugh." Many 
of us have long been prejudiced against 
Carlyle, largely by the things which we 
have read about him. We have settled 
down in the belief that he was a cross- 
grained old curmudgeon, sour and dys- 
peptic, altogether unreasonable, a scold 
and tyrant with whom it was impossible 
for anybody to live. We get this im- 
pression, not only from what certain 
writers have written about him, but 
also from language which he himself 
pubKshed. But those who knew Carlyle 
best never got that impression of him. 
The men who sat with him before 
the fire in the little home in Chelsea, 
smoking and talking until midnight, did 




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not go away feeling that Carlyle was 
incorrigibly pessimistic and disgustingly 
sour. They went away with an impres- 
sion quite different, because they heard 
him laugh. He had a wonderfully 
hearty laugh, and after his terrible 
tirades against humanity, he would 
open his big Scotch throat and let out 
a stream of Scotch laughter which 
dissipated all the gloom. It is won- 
derful how a burst of laughter can 
clear the air. Why do you not intro- 
duce a laugh now and then when the 
storm clouds gather and your world 
becomes suddenly dark ? The next time 
you break forth into fierce denunciation 
over some miscreant in particular, or 
over degenerate humanity in general, 
why not close your denunciation with a 
hearty laugh .^^ It would add to the 
originality of your year. 

Or if you do not introduce a smile or 
a laugh, then possibly you might intro- 
duce a bit of fire. John Wesley made 
the eighteenth, century new by adding 
to its life a little heat. When one reads 
his sermons, one is surprised that ser- 
mons such as those should have pro- 
duced such tremendous effects. They 

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seem so simple, and on the whole so 
commonplace. They say only things 
that had been said a thousand times 
before, and one is puzzled to account 
for their far-reaching influence. Cer- 
tainly Wesley was not original if judged 
by his language or by his doctrine — 
and yet he was one of the mightiest 
men that has ever lived. How did he 
produce his effect.^ Not by dramatic 
art or by elocution or by rhetoric or by 
emotional appeals or by thunder. This 
little preacher spoke in quiet tones, he 
was never noisy, his touch was gentle, 
his eloquence was of the subdued order. 
How can you account then for his 
miracles .f^ He performed his wonders 
by the introduction of a little fire. One 
evening he went to hear a Moravian 
preacher unfold one of St. Paul's letters, 
and while he was listening, he felt his 
heart "strangely warmed." From that 
time onward, he put into every sermon 
a coal of fire, and the fire which he 
kindled throughout England became a 
great conflagration which is burning 
today around the world. Wesley has 
exerted a mightier influence over the 
Christian church than any man since 
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Martin Luther. He did it all by means 
of fire. 

If you should get close enough to 
God to have your heart "strangely 
warmed," strange things and wonderful 
might happen within a year. The fire, 
once kindled, would pass into your 
prayers and escape into your work, 
piercing the central places of your 
home and church and business, and in 
the flame many of the flimsy trappings 
of your fife would be consumed, and 
many an obstacle to larger living 
would be burned away, and thus by 
fire the year would be cleansed and 
glorified. 

It is characteristic of the most orig- 
inal men in the world's history that 
they have all dealt entirely with material 
that was old. The greatest of the 
composers have invented no new tones. 
The most illustrious of the painters have 
invented no new colors. The mightiest 
of the poets have coined no new words. 
Genius, when most original, expresses 
itself in material which is old. Shake- 
speare, the most original of English 
poets, made free use of material col- 
lected by his predecessors and con- 

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temporaries. The plots of his dramas 
were, in many cases, taken bodily from 
the poets and chroniclers of earlier days. 
He did not deem it worth his while to 
invent new characters or devise new 
situations. He used old material, but 
he compelled it to sing a new song. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an indefati- 
gable reader, and he culled from the 
masters the choicest of their gems. 
There are those who dispute his claim 
to originality, but his fame is secure. 
Who can read his essays and poems 
without confessing that, though this 
man is opulent in quotations, he never- 
theless sings a new song. Jesus was 
the most original of all religious teachers, 
but he used both the language and the 
conceptions of the men that preceded 
him. If you study what we call the 
Lord's Prayer you will not find a soh- 
tary petition that is new. Each one 
of them had been prayed thousands of 
times before Jesus came. Or if you 
take his beatitudes, there is no one of 
them new. They had all been uttered 
by prophetic voices long before his day. 
His great phrase, "the kingdom of 
God," he received from the hps of 

281 



I 




f 



AN ORIGINAL YEAR 




others. But there is no doubt that 
Jesus sang a new song. He was a New 
Man. He was the Man from heaven. 
He made use of the old material in such 
a way that he changed the world by it 
forever. 

O sing then unto the Lord a new 
song. The material with which you 
are going to work this year is old, the 
world in which you will live is old, the 
heavens under which you will walk are 
old, the temptations and problems and 
difficulties which you will meet are all 
old, but it is nevertheless possible to 
sing a new song. If you ever find your- 
self saying, "Vanity of vanities, all is 
vanity, — there is no new thing under 
the sun," check yourself with the exhor- 
tation, "O my soul, sing unto the Lord 
a new song!" Bring to the old work a 
deeper insight, and to the old relation- 
ships a finer fidelity, and to the old 
tasks a nobler spirit, and the year upon 
which you are entering will not be like 
any of its predecessors. It will be an 
original year. It will be a "happy new 
year." It is true that there is no new 
thing under the sun. But it is pos- 
sible, by God's grace, for there to be a 

[29] 



M 




AN ORIGINAL YEAR 

new man, and wherever there is a new 
man, the world hears, in the midst of 
*^ its old noises and discords, a song that 
is new. 



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